Monday, May 2

Babe

I was taking pictures of our new piano for the insurance company tonight, and captured this image of part of the innards. I thought it was good looking, so why not make a blog of it?

We bought a piano recently. With a glass of wine, I strode out to the studio and plunked around on it, inventing chords and melodies that have never been heard in all of musical history. Hopefully, they’ll never be heard again. The insurance company wanted pictures of the piano and its studio. With the sun late in the sky, the best lighting, the “golden moment” was occurring. I wanted to show them the model and serial number and captured this image, part of which is shown.

Steinway makes beautiful instruments. This little closeup shows some of their craftsmanship. It took almost a year on the part of hundreds of craftsmen/women to produce our piano. It is gorgeous and sounds like something that comes straight from Heaven. It just flat out digs into your innermost heart and soul. Nothing sounds like a Steinway. Nothing feels like a Steinway. We love it. We’ve named it Babe.

2 comments:

Pete S.
said...

How often will you be changing those strings? A guitar needs new strings after several hours of playing. A piano is like a guitar but with more strings, so I assume you'll be changing them regularly. I don't envy you.

I hope we never have to replace them. In a DVD called Note by Note, which follows the making of one piano, the “stringer” has bandages on every finger and thumb. Whether those are required uniform or just fixes for many wounds, they didn't say.

Guitar strings are mere steel and are handled by sweaty players’ hands; the Steinway’s strings are never touched by human hands and besides they’re made of butted and fused (with hens’ teeth) hummingbird tongues.